


Echoes of Camelot

by Moontyger



Category: Dark Is Rising Sequence - Susan Cooper
Genre: Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-22
Updated: 2013-09-22
Packaged: 2017-12-27 09:01:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/976929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moontyger/pseuds/Moontyger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At times like this, preoccupied with the ordinary tasks of life, Bran seemed just like the ordinary man he was now – the ordinary man Will could never quite be.   But then the light would catch the white of Bran's hair just right and it would shine silver, like a halo or a crown, and Will would be all too aware of just who it was in his small flat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Echoes of Camelot

**Author's Note:**

  * For [phoenixflight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenixflight/gifts).



Dusk fell early this time of year; some days there seemed scarcely any hours of daylight at all. Once Will would have noticed, perhaps mourned the passing of the light, but these days, he didn't give it a second thought, merely switched on the lamp and kept working.

He was working now, frowning to himself and biting his lip in the sole warm gold circle of light in the dim room, glancing between the heavy, leather-bound book open in his lap and the words on the screen. He'd just lifted his hands to the keyboard and begun typing again – once a laborious process, his fingers now moved over the keys without his needing to think about it at all – when he heard the knock at the door.

Will sighed and considered ignoring it, but his concentration had been broken anyway. Carefully setting the book aside, he got to his feet, shoving his hair off his forehead in the old habitual gesture as he made his way to the door, threading carefully through the books stacked haphazardly over most of the floor.

By the time he got there, the knock had been repeated, and he half-hoped whoever it was had gone away, a hope that vanished as soon as the door was opened.

Bran stood there, leaning casually against the wall by the door, clearly prepared to wait however long it took. He smiled when he caught sight of him and for a moment, all Will could think was what a mess he was: unshaven, hair every which way, and dressed in a T-shirt and jeans he suddenly remembered picking up off his floor that morning.

That was all he had time for before Bran was upon him, pushing him hard against the doorframe and kissing him. Anyone could see them there and Will could feel the flush rising over his face at the thought. It was all very well for Bran; he was used to both being stared at and throwing that same staring in people's faces, but Will wasn't like that. As the quiet youngest son of such a big family, he was used to being overlooked, and despite everything, despite his role as Sign-seeker and Watchman, he was uncomfortable doing anything that might attract too much attention, so he pulled away as soon as he could, grasping Bran's forearms with both hands and pulling him inside his flat.

Once the door was safely shut behind them, he was more than happy to resume kissing, but by then Bran had moved away. He stood back and surveyed both the room and Will himself with a measuring sort of look followed by a disapproving shake of the head. “When I heard you weren't coming to Wales or going home for the holidays, I knew it'd be bad. But this is worse than I thought.”

Without waiting for a response, he started through Will's tiny flat, turning on lights as he went. As the light spread, revealing the mess his place had become, Will winced. It was as though he were seeing it for the first time himself and his only justification sounded stupid to his own ears as well. “You didn't tell me you were coming.”

“And if I had, I wouldn't have seen how you were really doing.” Bran shook his head and started opening cupboards.

Will watched him, hands in his pockets, and wondered what to say. It was funny how much easier it had seemed when they were younger, when he was fighting the great rising of the Dark. Then, he'd known just what to do, even in the strangest of situations. Now here they were, grown men, and he could watch Bran in his kitchen and not have the slightest idea what to say. Finally, he managed to ask the obvious question. “What are you doing?”

“It's past seven and it's obvious you haven't eaten. I'm making you dinner.”

He might have argued, but his stomach growled, agreeing with Bran's assessment of things, and after that, Will couldn't protest.

“At least let me help.”

“You'd just be in the way.”

Given the size of his kitchen, it was true. But he couldn't just go back to work either and it was far too late for cleaning. So with nothing else to occupy him, Will sat down at the table and watched Bran cook.

At times like this, preoccupied with the ordinary tasks of life, he seemed just like the ordinary man he was now – the ordinary man Will could never quite be. But then the light would catch Bran's hair just right and it would shine silver, like a halo or a crown, and Will would be all too aware of just who it was in his kitchen, cooking his dinner.

It felt suddenly like a waste and he swallowed hard, unaccountably wistful. If Bran had chosen otherwise, he wouldn't be here at all. And yet, he'd given up so much! Even if Will were the only one who remembered, he still felt deep sorrow at the thought.

“Did you ever think of doing something else?” he asked Bran suddenly. “Something besides taking your father's place on the farm?”

Bran glanced back at him, the look in the golden eyes suddenly sharp, but he just shook his head. “And what else should I do, then? Do a research degree like you, so lost in books I forget to eat?”

Will shrugged, but he wasn't quite uncomfortable enough to drop it. “There are other things you could do. You thought about it once.”

“And then I changed my mind.” Bran paused and turned his back to the stove, looking directly at Will now with the old defiant arrogance, the one that took a perverse pride in the way people called him a freak and made signs against the Evil Eye in his direction. “I'm a Welsh shepherd's son and that's all I'll ever be.”

Will wanted to protest, but what was the point? It was close enough to the truth, at least these days, now that this was merely a world of mortal men and very little more. He fell silent, just watching Bran cook and thinking.

* * *

Will's failures at housekeeping extended to grocery shopping; despite his best efforts, the meal Bran cobbled together was more a mix of odds and ends than a feast. Bran looked at it when he was finished and shook his head. “It's not much of a birthday dinner. Maybe I should have told you I was coming after all.”

Will glanced at his plate and started to politely protest that it was fine, when the meaning of Bran's words finally sunk in. “Is it that time already?” Strange that he would have forgotten. Then again, for an Old One, birthdays were less meaningful than they were for other people. All birthdays, that is, except for the first, the one that had awoken him to the world as it truly was – the world and himself.

“Forgetting your own birthday, too?” Bran tsked at him, though it had a teasing tone, with little of the sharpness his words could have. “You _are_ in a bad way.”

“I suppose you're right.”

“Well, there'll be no more of that now, not until at least after Christmas. _I'm_ here now.”

It was an arrogant statement, but Will found he was smiling just the same. There was something about Bran's arrogance that he found reassuring. It was one of the few traces left of Bran as he'd once been – not just the strange, prickly boy without friends, but the one who'd stood by his side, holding off the dark with a crystal sword forged by a long-lost king. These days, he might not be much more content, but he hid it better. The rest he had left behind him, to leave the world with his father.

“Then you'll have to give me better things to do.” Will smiled as he said it, an insinuating sort of smile that he could never have pulled off at twelve, no matter what else he might have been. A smile that Bran returned in kind.

“I'll make sure of it.”

* * *

It was much later when he started awake, alone in a bed that felt suddenly both vast and lonely in a way it never did when there was no one else here. Under the moonlight streaming in from his bedroom window, the white sheet over the empty space beside him seemed for a moment to stretch away into the distance, a vast plain of unbroken snow.

Shivering, Will retreated from the sight and the sense of cold remoteness it evoked, stumbling in a still half-asleep sort of way as he went in search of Bran.

It wasn't much of a search; his rooms were too small to leave many possibilities. He found Bran draped over the couch and covered with a blanket, the flickering light of the telly Will used so little he often forgot it was there casting odd shadows over his pale skin and hair. Still seeking to rid himself of the loneliness that seemed to hang about the night like a fog, Will joined him there, wedging himself tightly against Bran's longer limbs.

“You're cold,” Bran complained, but he didn't pull away, merely adjusted the blanket to cover them both and draped an arm lightly around Will's waist.

“Maybe you're just hot.”

“Ha. You know it.”

They lay there together in silence, staring at the television although, for Will's part, he didn't really see it. He was too distracted by Bran's breath in his ear and the memory of the first time he'd felt it like this, when the raven boy had urged him to make a wish on the falling stars of the High Magic.

At the time, Will had wished, but it was more a sort of formless longing, something he couldn't put into words, even with all the wisdom of an Old One. Now, lying there in the dark, Bran's bare chest pressed against his back, he thought that this, or something very like it, was what he'd wished for. He just hadn't really known it at the time.

His eyes drifted closed again and he allowed it, hovering on the verge of sleep but not there yet. Dimly, he heard the voice of Prime Minister Thatcher from the television and, even thought he wasn't awake enough to hear her words, Will frowned.

The Dark was gone, defeated for the last time. This world was for men now, not Old Ones and the creatures of the Dark. Yet, in her voice, Will heard all the old hate and contempt: for the poor, the immigrants – anyone not like her. It reminded him of Mr. Moore, the man who'd come to complain about Will's older brother Stephen stopping his son's bullying of an Indian boy, bullying the man felt was justified by the color of that smaller boy's skin. He remembered how he'd sensed the Dark in him, feeding and thriving on his prejudices, and he wondered just how much the Light's victory really meant. If humans created the world the Dark wanted, even without their urging and of their own choosing, had they really won anything at all?

He caught his breath, suddenly conscious of Bran's presence in an entirely different way. Bran had given up his heritage, yes, but despite Merriman's words about the finality of that choosing, the truth was as Will himself had once spoken it: there were no such things as endings or beginnings, not really. Time was not a river, flowing in only one direction. It was more complex than that.

“For Time does not die, Time has neither beginning nor end, and so nothing can end or die that has once had a place in Time.” Will heard Gwion's voice as clearly if he were standing there before him. For a moment, he felt dizzy, as though he were standing on a precipice and looking over the edge, with no magic to stop his fall.

 _We could do it all again,_ he realized. The Pendragon and his wizard, once more creating Camelot, bringing light this time to the darker parts of human nature, those places in the heart where the Dark still dwelled, even if its Riders had been pushed out of time. 

_But what would that really mean: Camelot, here and now?_ Even as he wondered, he heard his voice, sounding far more distant than Gwion's remembered one. “Have you ever considered going into politics?”

“Still trying to change my life?” Bran laughed, but it wasn't quite as dismissive as he probably meant it to be. Even now, Will knew, he was considering it. “And who'd vote for me?”

With some effort, Will turned in his arms so he could see Bran's face. From this angle, the television made it seem to glow, the only light in the dark. “I think you'd be surprised.”

Bran made a thoughtful sound, then lowered his head to meet Will's gaze. He was shadowed now, the room too dark to even make out the color of his eyes as he asked, “What about you?”

Will knew what he meant. The Pendragon charisma was all very well, but could it make up for not merely the lack of wife, but the presence of a boyfriend: a man who sometimes got so caught up in his research that he forgot to comb his hair? British politics had perhaps not come that far, not yet. 

But Will thought of Merriman again: Merriman and Arthur, together in the dark night before the Battle of Mount Badon, and found he wasn't worried. “We'll figure something out.”

**Author's Note:**

> For the purpose of this fic, I have assumed the publication dates of the books are approximately when the events take place. Therefore, Will's 11th birthday was in 1974 and this story takes place sometime in the late 1980s.


End file.
